Spouse(s) Katie Amato Name John Amato | Children 2 Role Executive | |
Born August 8, 1980 (age 43) ( 1980-08-08 ) Englewood, California, U.S. Occupation Entrepreneur and media executive Title Co-President of Guggenheim Media Entertainment Group Residence New York City, New York, United States Alma mater Loyola Marymount University Profiles | ||
John Amato, an entrepreneur and media executive, is co-president of Guggenheim Media's Entertainment Group. Amato oversees revenue, strategy and operations for Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter.
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Early life
Amato was born in Englewood, California and raised in Los Angeles. He attended Loyola Marymount University where he studied economics. Amato currently resides in New York City with his wife Katie and their two children, John and Liv.
ShowMedia
In 2005, Amato founded and led ShowMedia, a transit-based outdoor advertising company. Under Amato, ShowMedia's annual revenue grew to $15 million in less than four years. The company's clients include more than 300 Fortune 1,000 companies including Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, Nike, Universal Pictures, the Walt Disney Co., Verizon and Louis Vuitton.
Amato conceived the redesign of the New York City advertising taxi top to create "a more lightweight, eco-friendly, and high-impact taxi top billboard."
In 2009, Amato, through ShowMedia, ran a goodwill campaign posting fine art on the billboards of 500 New York City taxis with the works of artists like Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz, and Yoko Ono who featured throughout the month of January. The project, which, according to the New York Times cost $100,000, was designed by Amato to "give something back to the city."
Backstage
In October 2011, Prometheus Global Media announced the formation of a "strategic alliance" between itself and a group of investors led by Amato to acquire a stake in Backstage, a leading arts publication. Amato assumed the role of Chairman and CEO of the publication.
Billboard Group
In April 2013, Guggenheim Partners announced it had folded Sonicbids, the networking platform that connects music artists with promoters and gigs, into the newly created Billboard Group. Led by Amato, the Billboard Group also included Billboard magazine. In 2013, Backstage and Sonicbids were sold to RZ Capital.
Guggenheim Media Entertainment Group
In January 2014, Guggenheim Partners announced that The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard would be run under a single unit, known as the "Entertainment Group". Janice Min, The Hollywood Reporter's editor is currently co-president and chief creative officer and Amato heads business initiatives for the group as co-president.
Under the direction of Amato, Billboard launched the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts in May 2014, marking the "culmination of an attempt to get real-time data into music charts." Amato also oversaw the extension of an agreement with Telemundo, in partnership with Dick Clark Productions, to produce the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the longest-running and most prestigious Latin music awards show on television, through 2020.
By early 2015, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter reached a combined 23.1 million unique monthly visitors and more than 15 million combined social media followers, with a record-setting 27.9 million combined unique visitors in February of that year (per comScore).
In 2015, Billboard launched Winterfest at Sundance, an exclusive concert series with Park City Live, Utah's premier music venue. Iggy Azalea headlined the first weekend event, with top acts performing throughout the festival weekend. Amato also led the introduction of the Hot 100 festival with Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter, at Jones Beach in New York.
At the end of March 2015, Amato secured a multi-year partnership with Tencent, China's largest web portal and the world's fifth-largest Internet company, placing exclusive content on Tencent platforms including QQ.com, the world's 10th largest website.